The opening shots in the battle over Gina Haspel’s nomination to lead the CIA badly missed their target Thursday, when ProPublica corrected a report that featured a number of false allegations about Haspel’s involvement in the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program. Senator Rand Paul, who repeatedly cited the false claims on a media tour highlighting his opposition to her nomination, brushed aside the erroneous information at the center of his attacks and reiterated his opposition.
The 2017 report falsely claimed that Haspel oversaw a ‘black site’ prison in Thailand during the interrogation of al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah. It also misattributed a quote to Haspel that the original report said showed her mocking Zubaydah and “accusing him of faking symptoms of physical distress and psychological breakdown.”
Paul read that quote during a press conference Wednesday and referred to it later in television interviews. He said it portrayed Haspel’s “gleeful enjoyment at the suffering of someone being tortured.”
ProPublica’s correction reads:
As for the quote, ProPublica said that they had misread a passage from CIA contractor and psychologist James Mitchell’s book.
A U.S. intelligence official lambasted Senator Paul’s use of the quote to National Review on Wednesday. The official noted that a close reading of Mitchell’s book confirms that the chief of base at the time of Zubaydah’s interrogation was a man.
Asked about ProPublica’s retraction late Thursday, a spokesman for Paul reiterated the senator’s opposition to Haspel.
“Senator Rand Paul was quoting a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. Regardless of the retraction of one anecdote, the fact remains that Gina Haspel was instrumental in running a place where people were tortured,” the spokesman said. “According to multiple published, undisputed accounts, she oversaw a black site, and she allegedly destroyed evidence of torture. This should preclude her from ever running the CIA.”
The ProPublica report maintains that Haspel oversaw the ‘black site’ during the waterboarding of the suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and was later involved in the destruction of video footage capturing interrogation sessions at the site.
